Dystopia

Dystopia is a difficult genre. If there is anything we don't know, it's the future. What the dystopic form has revealed is the imagination's capacity for horror, its proclivity for self-terrorizing, in a word, its fears. The genre has made many lasting contributions to the collective consciousness, namely, the doublespeak of 1984, the genetic manufacturing of Brave New World, and the rebelling technology of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But these lessons are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. An full investigation into the literary form is necessary.

Thesis: All literature is dystopia: representations of conflict, fear and death.
(William Wren gave me the idea.)

A preliminary list of novels and films:

1. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
2. 1984, George Orwell
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick
4. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
5. A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick (Richard Linklater)
6. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
7. Battlestar Galactica, Glen Larson and Ronald Moore
8. Bladerunner, Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick
9. Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders
10. Pastoralia, George Saunders
11. We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
12. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
13. Metropolis, Fritz Lang
14. Brazil, Terry Gilliam
15. Soylent Green, Richard Fleischer and Harry Harrison
16. Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron and P.D. James
17. The Purple Could, M.P. Shiel
18. Tom's A-Cold, John Collier
19. No Blade of Grass, John Christopher
20. The Day of the Triffids
21. Damnation Alley, Roger Zelazry
22. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart
23. Beyond Armageddon, Walter M. Miller
24. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller

Meditations

Philosophy is the art of contemplation. Thinking takes time. It is the fixing of one's mind upon a certain idea, or thought-space; the delving deeper into liberation via truth, or right-view; the resting of the mind and body in a clarity of light, or ultimate luminosity. Consider the following meditations.

a. On Non-Dual Reality.
Thesis: The process of enlightenment, or liberation, is none other than the process of dissolving the boundary between subject and object, between self and other, between interior and exterior.
Practice: Staring, with a soft gaze, at wind-blown leaves.

b. On The Mind/Body Problem.
Thesis: The mind is the body, as the body is the mind; the mind is none other than the body, as the body is none other than the mind; the mind is the perfect representation of the body, as the body is the perfect representation of the mind. The two are one; their separateness is illusion, or misapprehension.
Sources: Whitman, Dr. Reggie Ray, tantric tradition

c. The Dual-Dialectic of World-Politics
Thesis: The world is approaching, in Hegelian fashion, a dualistic political reality of, on the one hand, absolute totalitarianism, and, on the other, utter anarchy. The future holds both systems, simultaneously. Pockets of anarchy will stand over and against world-totalitarianism.